a beautiful hermeneutic [hur-muh-noo-tik]

I heard John Piper say in one of his “ask John Piper” talks a couple of weeks ago that every generation needs to look for holes in their theology. What is it we are missing that we can learn from other generations? For the puritans, they completely missed the boat on slavery. Theologically, especially in America, we are missing the boat on God's grace.   We have received grace from Jesus to bring about the obedience of faith. There is obedience involved in the Christian faith. Our obedience doesn't save us, but our obedience is the evidence of our faith and salvation in Jesus Christ.   I have been very disobedient. I have lived a life with the mindset that God's wrath is in the rear view mirror. That doesn't mean I don't feel guilty over my sin, because I do. It's just that I continue to show a pattern of resting on God's grace in certain areas of my life.   I know we don't like to talk about "works" or that there are rules to follow, ...

Enjoy!

There was no way around it, no place to hide. 30 was coming and there was nothing I could do about it. Slowly it creped up on me over 12 months, and now it is here. I am 30 years old. I sure as heck didn't let it take me without a fight! Wed night, Annie surprised me with a turtle pie during small group. She definately knows how to get straight to my heart. Thursday, I took the day off of work! I was able to catch up on some compilations I have been working on forever, wrote some music, drank several cups of coffee, went thrifting, watched Steve's keynote at Macworld, etc. Thursday night, Annie and I went to Pucket (awesome Thai place) followed by VIP seats at Monico. No one under the age of 21 was allowed in the theatre! Good times had by all. Friday night, I had 12 guys over to play video games. We had 2 projectors (Wii, Gamecube), 2 TVs, a Genesis, an Atari, some Guitar Hero, a little Sam Adams, and some Chicken Mariachi from Denatos. I schooled Geoff in some NHL '94, wh...

It's almost Christmas and you haven't gotten anything for the mac lover in your life. You cringe at the thought of heading out to your local mac retailer, feeling completely inadequate as they ask you questions about what version of OSX you have or if you are using a power pc or an intel based processor, etc, etc. Well, here are a couple of low cost programs that you can download for your favorite mac geek without having to leave the comfort of your computer chair. I have always enjoyed journaling on my computer, but I have never liked all the digital clutter of word or other word processing programs. Writeroom is a program that gives you a full screen writing environment, similar to a typewriter. The config is simple. You pick a background color, a page color, and a text color. Nothing else is on the screen. I use a black background, a grey page, and white text. It creates a peaceful writing experience, and it saves on battery life for your laptop. If you are a very busy perso...

I made this video to show at Summit last week. While only 7 minutes, it gives you a very small taste of what we saw and did while in India. All of the people in this video affected our lived in some way. I have been trying to think of the right words to right on here to explain what the experience was like. It was nothing short of life changing. I think this video does better justice then my words ever could.

Daniel Cannon is now 30. I missed his birthday while in India. He is my friend. I like him. We have fun. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DC!!!!

I got to spend some quality time with the kids in Java Thanda on Tuesday. We taught them how to play "Duck Duck Goose", "Simon Says", and they taught us an awesome game where you have to guess who the leader is in a mob of kids and if you get it wrong, you have to either sing or dance in front of everyone. The mob gets to pick whether you sing or dance. I have some video of that somewhere. This video here is just everyone being silly in front of the camera. I had them follow whatever I was doing. Good times were had by all. :-)

After 44 hours of travel, we are now back home. I look forward to posting more over the next couple of days. Thanks for all of your prayers. Many great things happened. We left our hearts with the people of India.

i am posting this from a small room inside out hotel in Hanmakonda. We finally got here last night after 2 days of travel. My days and nights are still a little off (we are 11.5 hours ahead), but I think my body will be adjusted after another nights sleep. Culture shock really doesn't do justice what we have experienced already. I have already taken 2 gigs of pictures/video so I will have plenty to show when we get back. We are staying right in the Hindu/Muslim political center. Mike said he has avoided staying at this hotel for 3 years for obvious reasons. We got out of our jeeps today and their were 6 muslim men, a couple holding uzi's. I can't say i will get used to that before we leave. As far as American standards go, this town is a dump. The bathroom and the dumpster are all the street. The roads are terrible and the building are all half finished. Regardless of the conditions in which these people live, they are some of the most amazing and kind hearted people you wi...

Jesus paid it all all to him I owe sin had left a Crimson stain He washed it white as snow We are off. We pray for the Harvest, Peace, and reconciliation.

Our trip to India is only 11 days away. God is already moving and doing some amazing stuff in our lives. When I have a couple of minutes to write more, I will. This is a video I edited from the last e3 trip to Banjara-land. This will give you an idea of where we are going.   For His glory

What can I say, we pick up right where we left off. I love these guys so much. Below is a little video tribute to the weekend. Here is a quick synops: I got to Minneapolis Friday afternoon and had some time to walk around downtown and just chill until Keith and Dan got there. Downtown Minneapolis is a great place to be, as I figured out last year at the Desiring God conference. There are lots of places to eat, bookstores, pubs, shops, music, everything. We went to an Irish pub Friday night once the boys got into town and we just talked and caught up for a couple of hours. Good times! Saturday, Keith and I went down to Caribou Coffee for breakfast while Dan stayed disciplined, running 5 miles in the hotel Gym. After that, we went over to Gameworks (like Dave and Busters) to watch some football, eat lunch, and play some games (you can see me schooling Dan in some Air hockey on the video. To be fair, he rocked us both in pop-a-shot). After that, we decided to take the train to look for a ...

The first annual MAN weekend is here! The week started out with a trip to Houston, and is ending with me in Minneapolis with my bros Keith and Dan (otherwise known as the big show). I don't have words for how excited I am about this weekend. Saturday we are going to see Purdue pound on Minnesota in the dome, and then Sunday we are heading over to John Piper's church. I couldn't script this any better. Let the smelly manness begin!

I took Annie skydiving on Saturday for her birthday. Rather then trying to explain the experience, you can watch it here: Saturday we kicked it old school with a small group slumber party. A little Balderdash, a few Saved By The Bell episodes, lots of candy and cake, and a few rip roarin games of Pit. It was like we were in junior high again, except with a few less zits. I will post some pics from that another day.

Yesterday was the big day of the Huntsville sprint triathalon. This years experience was much better then last year, largely due to the fact that we had a team of 12 from Summit doing the race with us! The heat and humidity were enough to drop a cow to it's knees, but not us! I did think that Paul was going to die in the pool, but we all managed to finish with respectable times. Afterward, a few of us went to ihop where we immediately gained back the weight that we had lost during the tri. We already got a few more recruits for next years team, probably due to how cool we all looked sporting our Summit Crossing Trathalon Team t-shirts this morning at church :-) Below are a few pics from the race. The rest can be found here.

This headline from Drudge says it all: Alabama hits 100+ degrees for the 11th straight day; smashes previous record of 7 days...

After a 3 hour delay in Cinci, I am back home in Alabama (otherwise known as Africa). The Milwaukie experience was a good one, although we weren't able to completely solve the problem we were sent up there to investigate. I was, however, able to go through 2 large Duncan Donuts coffee's! We don't have those down here, so I had to take it when I could get it. I also got myself a Usingers Polish Sausage while in town. You have to get something that an area is famous for and Milwaukee is famous for sausage (and beer). After our first day of tedious testing and troubleshooting, Russ and I were ready to kick back and have a little fun. We hopped in the Camry and headed down to the river walk. I think we were both shocked with how safe and clean downtown Milwaukie was. There were a lot of young people out and about going to and from their downtown condos. We had a significant number of restaurants to choose from in the downtoan area. When doing some research online, I found an in...

Today I awake to the dreary cool (68) that is brew town. Everytime I hear the word "Milwaukee" I think of that scene from Wayne's world where Alice Cooper explains it's origin. A little nostalgia shall we? Wayne Campbell : So, do you... come to Milwaukee often? Alice Cooper : Well, I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers began visiting here in the late 16th century. Pete : Hey, isn't "Milwaukee" an Indian name? Alice Cooper : Yes, Pete, it is. In fact , it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land." Wayne Campbell : I was not aware of that. :-) Well, time to get to go find some crosstalk.

The following is from John Piper's Blog last week regarding the Minneapolis bridge collapse. His church is right down the street. He offers some sobering thoughts about our perspective during tragedy. Putting My Daughter to Bed Two Hours After the Bridge Collapsed At about 6 PM tonight the bridge of Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. I am writing this about three hours after the bridge fell. The bridge is located within sight of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Most of us who minister at the church cross this bridge several times a week. At this point I don’t know if any staff was on the bridge. Desiring God offices are about a mile from the bridge. There are no firm facts at this point about the total number of injuries and fatalities. When we crossed the bridge Tuesday on our way out of town, there was extensive repair work happening on the surface of the bridge with single lane traffic. One speculates about the unusual stresses on the bridge with ...

Last Friday was crazy Hawaiian shirt day on the PVT team. Only 4 of the 9 participated. You can tell who the really cool ones on our team are. BTW, the guy next to me (Mr. Geoff Calrson) just had his second baby yesterday. Congrats Geo!!